Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

2005 Top Ten: Trends to Watch: Page 3 of 7

No. 7: Serial Platforms -- Ready for Primetime

Serial ATA (SATA) drives saturated the market in 2004, and serial-attached SCSI (SAS) products are right around the corner, with shipments scheduled for the first quarter of 2005. IDC says serial-disk technology will bump the storage semiconductor market past $1 billion next year, and market research firm The Info Pro (TIP) says SATA drives are already the top storage spending priority.

No. 6: NAS Proliferation

Everybody’s getting into the NAS act as 2005 approaches. This year, SAN vendors Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), and Xiotech made NAS news either with product refreshes or by jumping into the market. The roster of NAS startups also grew. We even saw wireless and home NAS devices pop up. As the year ends, we hear Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) plans to get into NAS as well. It should be interesting to see how it all shakes out in 2005.